Offseason Training for High School Girls Basketball

by
STEVE SILVERMAN Last Updated: Aug 17, 2015

Steve Silverman

Steve Silverman is an award-winning writer, covering sports since 1980. Silverman authored The Minnesota Vikings: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Who's Better, Who's Best in Football -- The Top 60 Players of All-Time, among others, and placed in the Pro Football Writers of America awards three times. Silverman holds a Master of Science in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism.

Making a commitment to offseason practice can help a high school girl improve her game.Photo Credit Andersen Ross/Blend Images/Getty Images

When high school girls want to improve in basketball, they don't have to wait for tryouts before the start of the season to improve their game. They can work on their skill level and strength and conditioning throughout the offseason. High school players who improve their speed, endurance and strength will become tougher to stop as long as they also work on their basketball skills.

Strength Training

Getting stronger to prepare for the basketball season will help you become a tougher and more effective player. This will help you hold your position when you are going after a rebound or trying to play effective defense. You can lift weights to get stronger. The power clean, push jerk, bench press, biceps curls, back squat, leg press and lunges are all effective strength training exercises for women basketball players. You can also use the medicine ball or kettlebell to do strengthening exercises.

Jumping Ability

Jumping higher and more explosively than your opponent is an obvious benefit in the game of basketball. You can do plyometric exercises and drills to jump higher and avoid knee injuries. Some of the exercises you'll experience include mini-hurdles, tuck jumps, depth jumps, and medicine ball depth drops. A simple, sample exercise to perfect your jump has you stand under the backboard with your feet shoulder width apart. Bend your knees and jump as high as you can. Touch the backboard with your hand. As you come down, bend down in a crouch and then jump as high as you can again. Do this 10 times, take a one-minute break and repeat the set. You can also wear jump soles to increase your leaping ability. Attach the jump soles to the front of your athletic shoes and go to the local track. Sprint 20 yards in them and then walk 10 yards. Follow this pattern 10 times, and then remove the jump soles.

Quickness Exercises

The ability to move with speed and quickness can help you win more individual battles than any one single quality. Improving in this area will give you a surge of confidence as well. To build quickness, jump rope, sprint, run stadium stairs, perform drills with an agility ladder and do box jumps. These exercise will help you become a more explosive player on the court and more effective overall.

Competition

You can play basketball all year long to improve. To bring your game up to a higher level, you have to seek out older and more experienced players. When you play better players, you will be forced to develop your ball-handling, shooting, passing and rebounding skills. "I always thought I had to find better players if my game was going to get better," said Hall of Fame point guard Nancy Lieberman-Cline. "I always wanted to play against guys or older players because I had a hunger to keep working on my game."